


Hanging Around

by damos



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:18:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damos/pseuds/damos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ford Perfect hangs around with Arthur Dent and Fenchurch.  The free time gives them an opportunity to talk...  If they really want to take it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hanging Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syllogismos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllogismos/gifts).



_A group of researchers in what had once been the Department of Intergalactic Para-psychology and Interspecies Relations (long since subsumed into the department of Galactic Tourism which itself had been subsumed into the department of Having Fun while your Parents/Guardians Foot the Bill) at MaxiMegalon University conducted a decades long study into the effects of prolonged travel on friendships.  In particular, they found that returning from a long trip and meeting up with old friends could elicit over 14,529 distinct emotions.  Of those, 1078 emotions were restricted to meeting up with an old friend and that friend's new lover/spouse/podmate.  They ranged from type 1 (Great!  Let's all shag ourselves silly) to type 1078 (Great.  Now I have to build a time machine and risk all the stupid craziness that goes along with that to go back to the moment I was born and kill myself to avoid having ever met these gits in the first place.  Ever.)  Number 842 was a feeling akin to being hung upside down and beaten with sticks._

Ford Prefect looked to his left and nodded weakly at this old friend, Arthur Dent.  He looked to his right and forced himself to smile at Dent's new lover, Fenchurch.  So, he thought to himself, this is what it feels like to be hung upside down and beaten with sticks.

"Ow," cried Arthur as one of the sticks connected with his nose. "That hurt."

Ford scanned rapidly through the survival skills he had learned in his years as a writer for the Guide.  "Try dodging?"

"It's a little hard to do when all the blood is rushing to your head."

It was a fair point.  He had to concede that Fenchurch had pointed out a reasonably large problem with his idea. He looked squarely at her.  Or as squarely as he could given the fact that they were both dangling upside down. In fact, all three of them were.  "Nonsense. You simply need to practice more."  Well, having to concede it was a good point to himself had no bearing whatsoever on whether he had to admit it out loud.

"Is this normal?" Fenchurch asked.

Ford chuckled to himself. " _Normal?_  No, not at all.  Normal is more like being forced to strip off your jacket and shoes, placing your copy of the guide in a box to be examined, and then being scanned with a scatter beam so that some minor functionary can see a blurry image of your more prurient bits before you are hauled off to some small, windowless room and shot.  On the whole, I'd say the way the Tarvinii have accepted us onto their planet has been unusually kind.  A little suspect even. The sticks aren't even proper sticks, frankly. And they really don't seem to put their backs into the hitting. Well, other than that tall fellow who seems to have gotten back in line."

"So.  It looks like we are going to be here for a while."  He looked over at the long line of Tarvinii outside the room waiting to get into the slightly shorter line of Tarvinii inside the room waiting to get into the slightly shorter still line of Tarvinii picking sticks to strike the newcomers, which is to say the only three "tourists" foolish enough to disembark at Tarvin.

"We might as well make the most of it."  Ford Prefect is, of course, a man who likes to make the most of any given situation--particularly any situation that involved expense accounts at the Guide, which rather explained this hastily arranged (and fabulously expensive) side trip to meet the Tarvinii. Unfortunately, the "most" he could imagine making of this situation was sleep, so he decided to go with what he knew Arthur and presumed Fenchurch would think of as the "most" to be made out of this situation. And so he collected himself for the torture and terror presented to him by what was about to happen: Small talk.

"So. My name is Ford. I'm from Guildford."

"You are not!"

Ford dodged another swing and twisted slightly to his left. "Thank you, Arthur. Your penchant for editorial accuracy is somewhat appreciated. But since you have been doing so not terribly well with the introductions, why don't you let me continue."

Arthur replied "ow."  Ford decided, at least, to take that as a reply and one which meant, "you may continue."  He wasn't sure when Arthur had picked up the Kaluriarian phrase for "you may continue" but there it was nonetheless.

"As I was saying, my name is... well, my real name is unpronounceable even by me--and thank you for reminding me of that, Arthur--and I am from Betelgeuse Seven by way of Guildford.  I work as little as possible, but when I do work it is as a writer for the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_."

He waited for an appreciative gasp, which did come, but not from Fenchurch. Several of the nearby Tarvinii decided to switch targets and take swings at him instead of Arthur or Fenchurch, presumably from the prestige that would result from having beaten with sticks someone connected with the Guide.

Several haphazard dodges later (which he did his best to play off as competent bobbing and weaving) he continued, "so you can ask me anything about anyplace.  I've been to most of them--places that is.  Been kicked out of quite a large percentage of them as well.  Some of the more interesting ones have thrown me out more than once."

Fenchurch did her best to simply ignore the incoming blows.  "All right. Ow.  There is. Ow. One thing that I. Ow. Want to ask you."

"Go right ahead."

"Why Arthur?"

"Sorry?"

"I asked why. Ow.  You picked Arthur."

"Oh, right. I got that.  My answer was sorry.  I may have had a rising intonation there, that happens when one is competently bobbing and weaving while speaking?" He bobbed to his right. "See?  Happened again."

Fenchurch frowned at him through a particularly soft thwacking--the Tarvinii had progressed on to the children--or perhaps just the quite short members of Tarvin's society as they looked identical, just shorter to her.  "So you felt sorry for him?"

"Constantly, but that isn't what I meant.  I meant he was a bit of a sad sack."

"Ow. That _really_ hurts."  Arthur had gotten struck on the nose again.  "And I expected that sort of answer from you, Ford."

"All right."  He turned to face Fenchurch again.  "I could be clever and ask you the same question, but I'm not particularly in the mood to be clever as being clever is what got me here in the first place.  So, here it is.  In simple terms, Arthur Dent is the human equivalent of a towel."

"Hey!"

"I presume he has explained to you the importance of towels."

Fenchurch nodded.  Or wiggled.  Or perhaps she was just dodging another blow from a stick.  Ford decided to treat it as a nod and move on.

"At any rate, the thing about towels is that they don't particularly fit most places, right?  You don't see a towel and think that it would go great on a wedding gown or at a Varkarnian dinner party.  In fact, in most of the more interesting places in the universe, they seem completely and utterly out of place, frumpy, odd."

He stared at Arthur who was, at the moment, being boxed on the ears by two enthusiastic Tarvinii. Arthur had settled in and seemed to be resolved to just endure until the beatings ceased. "See.  Towel."

"Right, but this isn't exactly..."

"No, it is _exactly,_ exactly.  Towels, it turns out, are downright handy in almost all of those places.  Towels do what they do.  They don't care if it is the second moon ceremony of Catalaxis or brunch on the Seine.  They just are.  Arthur just is.  He'll cry and moan, but he will, ultimately, eventually, settle down into his inner towelness."  

"So you really think Arthur is a sort of happy dude?"

"It is hoopy frood, and no.  Not at all. He is such a turlingdrome that he couldn't see hoopy if it joojooflopped him. _I'm_ the hoopy frood. I just like knowing where my towels are. What they are up to. Part of the thing, you see."

"Not really."

Ford smiled another lopsided smile. "Good, good. You and Arthur should get along fine then. Also, hey.  It looks like they are almost done."

He looked up, or quite possibly down, depending on whether you were orienting yourself based on the local gravity field (a thing which Ford generally was quite reluctant to do) or based on the position of your head to the rest of your body (a thing which Ford, as he rather liked the way his head was attached to his body, was generally quite fond of doing) and saw his trusty satchel.  He knew inside that bag was his towel, the best towel he could lay his hands on at the moment--that being a turn of phrase, of course, because Ford's hands were, in fact, tied behind his back. He could also just make out the very tip of the edge of his copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  

No matter how many times he reminded himself to not consider the Guide a good, no scratch that, literal was the better word. No matter how many times he reminded himself not to consider the Guide a literal guide to the Universe, he still made little mistakes like this.  "The Customs and Immigration process on Tarvin is not to be missed. An indescribable experience!  If you suggest a trip to your friends, it is something they will never forget."  Load of hogwash.  The experience was perfectly describable.  It was not, in fact, like being hung upside down and beaten with sticks, it was _exactly_ being hung upside down and beaten with sticks. He was hoping, however, that the inaccuracy of that particular entry would continue and that both Arthur and Fenchurch might forget about it all.  Given time.  And a few Pangalactic Gargleblasters.

 


End file.
